School of Hardknocks
by ethnonyms
Summary: Life could never be easy for Kevin Levin. -triggers.-
1. Early Childhood, Know

There's some stuff that Kevin just _knows, _without having to learn it, even when he's only a little kid.

For one, he knows from the start that he's different from other children.

—

It's in the way his father comes and goes at random in his life—breezing in with bandage-covered limbs at three o'clock in the morning on a Tuesday, bearing all kinds of weird presents from outer space. Other kids might have dads who drop them off at preschool every day, or who bake cookies for the entire class, dads who work in offices or at home to get the money they need.

Kevin's dad flies in a spaceship and carries a green badge, which means he's in charge catching of bad guys from other galaxies: sometimes on Earth but usually not. Both he and Kevin's mom tell Kevin all the time that his dad's job is important, _really_ important, and that's why he can't be around as much as Kevin wants.

It sucks, but Kevin knows without having to ask that there's nothing he can do to change it. So he keeps the souvenirs safe and waits by the front door every night, until his mother arrives, shaking her head, and carries his sleeping form upstairs to bed. He looks at his dad's pictures a lot and tries not to be sad, at least when he knows his mom is watching.

It's in the way that he has powers and the other kids _don't_.

Kevin knows he isn't supposed to use them, same as how he's supposed to tell anyone who asks that his dad fixes toilets for a living, even though that's boring and a lie and also kind of gross. He can't remember either of his parents talking to him much about his powers, but the answer is in the way his mother tenses when Kevin asks about it; how she reminds him, sometimes, that there's a lot of stuff he's not supposed to worry about until he gets older.

Kevin knows it's against the rules, but he practices, sometimes, when he's alone in his room and bored and missing his dad a lot. He thinks about how Devin can just _touch_ something with his hands and then _turn into it_, remembering the awe of watching his father absorb the surface of the grainy wooden table so that it traveled all the way up his whole arm.

Kevin tries it on his own, with his steel bedframe, and succeeds a few times in transforming the tips of his fingers into metal. Changing them back is hard, though, and he's too young to have the patience to really stick with the practice long enough to avoid becoming cranky at his own failures. Absorbing raw energy from wires and plugs is easier, and way more fun, but Kevin doesn't forget the way his mom slapped him once when she caught him doing it near the living room TV.

He'd felt amazing, then, like a toy with new batteries, and he hadn't cried at all while his mom was shouting at him. He didn't care about being in trouble, even tried to hit her _back_, only to have her catch his tiny wrists mid-swing. He'd screamed his head off when she locked him in his room for an hour as punishment, had thrown all his toys around in a giant mess, but after the energy wore off and he felt normal again Kevin was sorry for doing it. And even sorrier at having to clean it all up.

Kevin doesn't know why his mom got so mad at him, but he knows his dad will be angry disappointed in him when he finds out. Kevin doesn't try to absorb energy again for a long time.

— — —

A few weeks after Kevin turns four, he knows something is wrong when he hears his name called out over the PA system at school.

His teacher walks him to the principal's office. Kevin doesn't mind getting out of class, he _hates_ class, but going to the office means trouble. He's only been there once, after he pushed Mary Adler off the swing set at recess, but it had been _his_ turn to play and besides, she'd called him the F-R-E-A-K word that morning in homeroom when she thought he couldn't hear her.

Kevin knows this is different then that, though—somehow this has got to be worse. It's in the way his teacher is moving too stiffly, refusing to meet Kevin's eyes.

It's in the way Kevin's mom is already there, when he steps haltingly into the office. It's in the way she's _crying_, hard, hunched over in one of the soft leather chairs in front of the principal's desk. Her black hair is hanging down in lank strands, and there's makeup running in dark rivulets down her face.

He's never seen her like this. Never seen her so undone. "_Mom?_" Kevin asks, frightened, running as quickly as he can to reach her side.

The teacher says something, sounding pained, and the principal answers, but as far as Kevin is concerned his mother is the only other person in the room. She reaches out to catch him as he gets close, pulls him up into the chair with her by the arms so that he's sitting in her lap. She hasn't done that in a long time. Kevin's heartbeat races as she holds him very close and sobs, brokenly, clinging to Kevin like she's afraid he'll disappear.

"Mom?" he asks again, weakly, his voice muffled and afraid in the purple fabric of her shirt.

"K-Kevin," she says, breathing deeply and stifling her sobs so she can talk clearly. "Kevin, sweetie, _listen_ to me. I need you to know that your father always loves you, no matter what happens. He loves you so much. We both do. And you and I, we—we have to be very strong for him right now, okay?"

And just like that, Kevin knows his dad is gone.

— — — —

Little by little, Kevin comes to know death.

At first he thinks it's something like when his dad is off in space, killing bad guys and fighting evil aliens. He thinks it might take longer this time, a lot longer, for Devin to come home, but he doesn't doubt that it's going to happen eventually. He begs his mother to stop crying and doesn't understand, why she looks so upset when she sees Kevin waiting by the door like he always does.

Then Kevin sees the body in the coffin at the funeral. There's more aliens present than humans, and they all seem to want to talk to him about his father, but Kevin isn't paying attention to anyone. He shouts for his father to wake up, screams until he's in the face and out of breath, and he only stops when an older man gravely puts a hand on Kevin's shoulder and points out that he's making his mother cry.

After that, Kevin thinks of death as very serious, very bad, but still temporary. In his mind, something's _wrong_ with his dad; his body isn't working anymore the way it's supposed to. Like a lamp that won't turn on. Kevin asks his mother if there's something they can do to fix it, like plugging the cord back in, but she cries and shakes her head and slowly Kevin understands that it's not that simple.

Weeks pass, and slowly Kevin begins to realize that death lasts forever.

The knowledge frightens him. He starts paying close attention to his own breathing, overcome by a terrible fear that his heart might stop at any moment. He wakes up in the middle of the night and runs into his mother's room, shaking her by the arm and screaming so that he knows she can still wake up if he needs her to.

When that happens, his mom hugs him close and tucks him in under the covers beside her. Her eyes always seem tired now, but she lies awake with him in the early hours of the morning, stroking Kevin's hair and talking to him about his dad. She uses the word _hero_ a lot to describe Devin, and _brave_, and _good_, and _did the right thing._

She doesn't use the word _strong_ to talk about his dad, though. _Strong_ is a word for Kevin and herself. He clings to it like an emblem.

"We're going to make it through this, baby," his mom whispers to him over and over again, tears running silently down her cheeks. "We have to be strong for your father. He would want us to live our lives and go on. I know it isn't fair, but we have to be strong and move forward, okay? We're going to make it because we have to."

This is Kevin's first real lesson about the world: the universe they live in is a cruel, unfair place. And only the strong survive.


	2. Adolescence, Tox

For a while, after Kevin gets out of the Null Void, he sells drugs to get by on his own.

This is before he starts dealing in alien tech, _way_ before, and they're not the sort of drugs a human cop would recognize. Back in prison, he'd started paying attention early on to the sorts of things other inmates would try to smuggle in as contraband. Hallucinogenic dust from Faregon's third moon was a popular find, for example. Or the slimy secretions from the palm-skin of an Anuralon. Nothing he'd ever in a million years want to try for himself himself, usually, but there's a market for everything, if you know exactly where to look for it.

Kevin knows a lot of things, now. Some, he really wishes he didn't.

But he'll survive. He always has before.

— — — — — — — — — — — —

Dealing alien narcotics is how he meets Deliah.

She's a lot older than him, at least nineteen, and like Kevin she's used to living on her own. Deliah can pass for human, but there's got to be at least a bit of Sonorosian in her blood: behind her gaudy designer sunglasses, her eyes are solid green, and whenever she gets worked up into a screaming fit over something her latest boyfriend said, windows tend to break and car alarms go off all the way down the neighborhood. It'd be funny, if it weren't so fucking annoying.

Once Kevin gets past the fact that Deliah's an unapologetic golddigger, and also sort of a creep, he decides she isn't really that bad for company. She always laughs too loudly at his lousy jokes, especially when she's high, and she likes to drag Kevin all over town in her pink convertible to talk his ear off about shit he doesn't care about.

It's weird, having a friend. Deliah's nothing like Kwarrel was—she hasn't got an ounce of wisdom or patience in her body, and she never plans ahead or learns from her mistakes, complaining about the same old stupid problems week after week.

Still, for some reason or other she has it in her head that it's her job to look out for Kevin, and that's something, at least. Most people don't give a shit about where their drug dealer sleeps, even if he's rail-thin and barely thirteen years old. When Deliah finds out Kevin's still technically homeless, she offers him a space in her flat on the spot, in exchange for a cut of his profits. Old pride warns Kevin to shove the offer back in her face, that he doesn't need her, but the truth of it is he's sick of being on his own. He misses Kwarrel so much it's like his fucking _arm_ or his _leg_ has been cut off instead, something vital just taken away from him, and he doesn't know how to deal with that kind of emotional pain after so many years of feeling nothing but anger. Deliah and her big mouth and reckless attitude are easy, mindless ways to fill the void in his heart.

— — — — — — — — — — — — —

It's a pretty good thing, while it lasts.

Deliah's place is small and cramped, but it might be decent if she could ever be assed to clean it. Kevin doesn't mind the mess, though. It helps keep Deliah at a juvenile place in his mind, far apart from the memory of his mother (_didn't want him_) or his mentor (_couldn't save him_).

She hasn't got any sort of real job, she's _way_ too temperamental for that; but between her seemingly endless string of rich boyfriends and Kevin's drug money, they get by all right. He knows how to tell when she's bringing someone home by the sound of muffled voices outside the door, and that's when he ducks out the nearest window, running errands in the city and making deliveries until the sun rises. By that time, she's usually fleeced the guy out of a few expensive gifts and kicked him out of the apartment, and when Kevin gets back he tolerates her bragging for as long as he can stand before passing the hell out on the couch with his head resting in her lap.

Deliah might be older, but she normally doesn't act it, and Kevin himself has done a lot of growing up in the past few years. They're more or less on equal footing when it comes down to the business side of things, but on a day-to-day scale, he's mostly content to let her treat him as a pet. She feeds him and tells him about her day and buys him obnoxiously useless presents with his own money, and Kevin tolerates it, because it's sort of weirdly endearing and a _lot_ better than what it could be. He finds himself getting high with her more and more often off his own supply, with Psychelia rainforest tree leaves from six galaxies over and Anuralian slime and all kinds of messed up shit because it helps him _forget_ every bad thing that's ever happened to him. He learns to laugh again, strange, delirious laughter that bubbles up from somewhere dark inside of him when Deliah pulls him into her lap and plants wet kisses on his face, giggling at the small noises he makes.

Kevin tells himself that Kwarrel would be okay with all of this, if he could see how Kevin was doing now. After all, he's not angry anymore. He's moving on—maybe not in the healthiest way, but at least he's not carving out his life in bodies anymore, desperate for revenge. He hasn't thought about Ben Tennyson in weeks. The drugs are still less dangerous than some of his Osmosian powers; Kwarrel can't fault him for that. Kevin Levin's a long cry from being really _happy_, whatever that is, but honestly, when has he ever been? It sure beats the Null Void, or the streets.

And yeah, Deliah can definitely be an annoying bitch when she wants to be, and Kevin wouldn't trust her with his wallet or his life, but usually she's harmless.

Usually.

— — — — — — — — — — — — —

For all that she acts like an airheaded moron, though, Kevin knows Deliah's been through some awful stuff.

She doesn't talk about it, and he'd never bother to ask, but she wakes up sometimes from terrible nightmares, sobbing like she's going to die. She gets so angry at her boyfriends that she breaks anything she can get her hands on during the worst of her temper fits, leaving gaping holes in the walls, splintering cell phones like twigs. She freezes up when anyone mentions her biological father, has to take dangerously high dosages of every alien drug known to man just to bleach away the memories she won't share.

Sometimes, Kevin will come home after a night when she's had someone over, and there'll be dark, ugly bruises shaped like fingerprints on her arms, or in a ring around her neck. Her smile is brittle when it happens, but she covers up the marks with heavy makeup and doesn't say a word. So he bows his head in silence and follows her lead, wondering if there's anything he could even do if he wanted to. He tries to respect her privacy, that's what he'd want in her place, but—it doesn't feel _right_.

Kevin has a sneaking suspicion that she sometimes fucks the landlord to get out of making rent, on the months they're a little behind on cash. He feels bad about it, a hot glut of shame in the pit of his stomach, but he doesn't know how to apologize for something that he can't acknowledge. It's not _his_ fault she keeps spending all their money on designer jewelry and organic groceries. But telling himself that doesn't make Kevin feel any better.

Sometimes, when she's high as fuck and they're alone together in the apartment, she starts touching him, under his clothes, everywhere. Her fingers shake as she pins him on the couch by his arms, pulling up Kevin's thin shirt to lick long, wet stripes up his torso, lingering on his stomach. She might kiss him at that point, or she might just keep running her hands and her mouth over him for a while, but it always gets violent toward the end, with her smashing their teeth and tongues together until both their mouths are sticky and coppery with blood.

It's not quite sex, not all the way, but she's lying on top of him like they're fucking and sometimes Kevin has flashbacks—of Jarrid, coercing him for blowjobs in exchange for meals under the bridge in New York, or assholes in the Null Void holding him down and raping him while he screams. He tolerates it anyway, even when she's in too close and he can't fucking breathe, because she probably needs _whatever_ this is and he's so, so tired of being alone.

A sick part of Kevin almost likes it. She's pretty, isn't she, she's blonde and stupid and she must care about him or whatever, because she always cries on his chest afterwards in apology and she takes him out for breakfast in the morning. It's only been a few months, but Deliah's already given Kevin more than he knew how to ask for after he got out of the Null Void: shelter, food, a chance at reacclimating himself to a world that isn't limited by the walls of a prison.

People use each other all the time, Kevin reminds himself. That's how it works. Once you figure out what they _want_, you can afford to let down your guard a little, because that's when you can take control and do the thing on _your_ terms. She's giving him everything he needs, and if this is the price he pays, well, he's been through worse. They both have.

This time, he has a choice. And _this_ time, there's at least the grim satisfaction of knowing his violator is suffering every bit as much from this as he is. He doesn't have to resort to violence or murder.

And mercifully, Kevin isn't alone anymore.

— — — — — — — — — — — — —

Six months pass. One afternoon, he finds her dead of an overdose in the apartment.

From what he can tell, she broke into his drug stash again, even though she _knew_ he'd already promised most of the goods to his regular clients. That was money they needed. Kevin can't bring himself to care, staring blankly down at the unmoving body on the floor next to the couch.

She's stiff and cold to the touch when he leans over to check her pulse, still dressed in her expensive designer clothes. She's wearing the sunglasses her first boyfriend bought for her in Chicago. Kevin bows his head and lets himself cry for a while, thinking about her, thinking about Kwarrel and his dead father. It isn't fair.

Life isn't fair. He knows that. Kevin eventually stands up and wipes his eyes, staggering over to the phone. He calls the police anonymously and books it out of there, not ready by a long shot to deal with the aftermath of Deliah's OD. He didn't have to call, but her family ought to know, at least. Her dad's long dead and Kevin knows she had a few sisters out in L.A., who might have at least cared enough to pay for the funeral.

Either way, it's not his problem anymore. Kevin's sick of drugs, sick of the sickly illusion of happiness. He's sick of caring about people and pretending the world is peachy keen. He needs to start over, far away from anyone who might put on a pretense of giving a shit about his life. He needs _Argit_.

"Hey, man," Kevin croaks out into his cell phone when he's put a few miles between himself and that apartment. His voice feels raw in his throat, but he keeps talking. He's got to make it, he's come too far to stop now. "Listen, you still peddling alien tech out by the coast? See, I've been thinking, lately, and I was wondering if you maybe wanted a business partner..."


End file.
